Virgin Media expands its 100 Mb service

By Kris Sangani

Published Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Cable provider, Virgin Media has announced an expansion of its 100 Mb service to a further 150,000 homes bringing the total to 350,000.

Virgin Media says its research has shown the service will be most useful when more than one person is online at home at the same time, using connected TVs, computers, games consoles or mobile smartphones.

As well as providing 100Mb download speeds, the service will also deliver 10Mb upload speeds, giving Virgin Media customers the ability to share content such as live high-definition video.

The new 100Mb package will come with a custom built, energy efficient, combined modem and wireless ‘N’ router, which has the potential to deliver speeds of up to 400Mb as new services roll-out in the future. The new will cost £35 a month when bought in a bundle, or just £45 per month when bought as a sole product.

“We’ve invested many billions of private money in order to build a growing network that already passes approximately 13 million homes across the UK. We’re racing to get these ultrafast speeds across this entire area as fast as we can to meet demand,” said Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media.

The internet data consumption on Virgin Media’s network has increased over 215 percent in the past three years.

The new locations to trial the 100 Mb service are located at:

Cheshunt, Hertfordshire;

Hatfield, Hertfordshire;

Pentwyn, Cardiff, Wales;

Southport, Merseyside; and

Treforest, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales

These join the original 200k homes in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan; Colchester, Essex; Farnborough, Hampshire; and Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire.

Virgin Media is also conducting trials of new methods to deploy high speed networks over telegraph or electricity poles and plans to expand its rollout of its next generation network over the coming months.